A Texas Tempest

The Austin, Texas, school district and one of its top administrators
were indicted last month after a six-month probe into charges that
school officials adjusted student data to raise scores on last year's
state exams.

The 16 separate indictments charging the 77,000-student district
with altering government records may mark the country's first criminal
prosecution against a school district, some education experts believe.
As part of the immediate fallout, Deputy Superintendent Kay Psencik was
placed on paid leave because prosecutors accused her of modifying
student-test data and failing to stop members of her staff from making
changes. If convicted, Psencik could face one year in jail, a $4,000
fine, or both. The district could be fined $160,000, or $10,000 for
each charge.

"This action gives us the vehicle to try to correct the problems
throughout the system which caused these types of violations," says
Travis County Attorney Ken Oden, who brought the case to a grand
jury.

Psencik's lawyer, Neal Adams, says his client, a longtime Texas
teacher and school administrator, is innocent of the charges. "She has
done nothing to deserve this," he says. "She intends to defend herself
to the hilt."

Meanwhile, A.C. Gonzalez, the district's interim superintendent, says
officials are studying the ramifications of the indictments. "Although
this matter is of serious concern, it does not diminish the hard work
done every day, in every classroom, by every teacher," he says.

Other states are also dealing with controversy surrounding
high-stakes exams. Rhode Island officials temporarily canceled five
English and mathematics exams in March after discovering that teachers
had used previous tests to prepare their students. In New York,
Commissioner of Education Richard Mills has named a panel to study
security problems with 4th grade reading tests.

But Texas seems to be the hardest hit--at least for now. The
210,000-student Houston Independent School District last month asked
for the resignation of a principal and three teachers following an
internal investigation into alleged tampering with state tests. The
nine-month inquiry there found irregularities at six of the system's
280 schools. Investigators say that students were given oral prompting
during last year's state exam, that answer keys were used to correct
student answers, and that test security was lacking.

In Austin, questions about the district's handling of test scores
were first raised last fall. The Texas Education Agency asked Austin
officials to explain why several students' Social Security numbers were
used in place of the state-assigned student numbers on 1998 test data.
An independent probe commissioned by the Austin schools found that
student--identification numbers for several low-scoring students at
three schools were intentionally altered. The alterations effectively
invalidated the students' scores, which, in turn, raised the state
ratings of those schools.

Following that investigation, Psencik, whose office was in charge of
student-test data, was reprimanded by the district. In February, she
announced her intention to retire at the end of this school year.

Although the district contended that no laws were broken, County
Attorney Oden disagreed and took his case to a Travis County grand
jury. He claimed that district officials broke the law by tampering
with government records.

Oden later expanded his investigation to include Austin dropout
records and other school district documents. That probe is
continuing.

Indictments against the district sparked accusations that the
county attorney was grandstanding.

The attorney stresses that the indictment against the district does not
"imply personal criminal wrongdoing by the board of trustees."

"Proceeding legally against both the individuals and the district
itself will give us the chance to seek both personal accountability and
improvement in the whole system as well," Oden says.

Still, the indictments against the school district sparked
accusations that Oden, a Democrat who was elected to his position, was
grandstanding. Others express surprise. "I've never heard of a school
district being criminally indicted," says Julie Underwood, general
counsel for the National School Boards Association.

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